Meet Johnny Gas of InRage Entertainment

Today we’d like to introduce you to Johnny Gas.

Thanks for sharing your story with us Johnny. So, let’s start at the beginning, and we can move on from there.
My music career started in the lunchroom at my high school my freshman year. I was introduced to hip hop and RnB and the art of freestyling by some friends of mine at school. I was never the best freestyler so secretly I started working on my wordplay and different rhyme schemes that I could use to be unique while freestyling. That fascination turned into a fascination with music as a whole.

I worked at a pawn shop in high school where I learned about all the different studio equipment (audio interfaces, mixers, microphones). I became obsessed with trying to make my songs sound as perfect as humanly possible. I left home to go to college in Charleston, SC where I received a scholarship to play baseball.

After my sophomore year, I realized that I did not love baseball in the way that all of my teammates loved it. So I quit the team and started my first company, GoldMinded Sound which started off as a sound engineering company. I would record other artists at my studio then I would mix and master the songs for them for a fee.

I found out very quickly that most of the artists that I would work with did not take music very seriously. I would try to push them to work harder because with the talent they had if they worked hard, I knew they could make it. So I made a decision to stop engineering other peoples music and start producing my own because by that time I knew I had the talent and the work ethic that I struggled to find in other artists.

I knew I had the talent, the work ethic and the technical knowledge of music production, the only thing I lacked was a message/story behind the music I was creating. At the time my music lacked purpose because my story had not fully developed. I graduated college in 2017, and I moved to Charlotte, NC to focus 100% on my music. 2018 was an extremely difficult year for me and caused me to go into clinical depression.

But through the trials of 2018, there was a massive silver lining, I finally found the message that I wanted to convey to the world. After whipping the depressive state that I was in, I doubled down on my music and started releasing singles that were meant to build a fanbase so I could drop my first solo album “Nothing Personal” which is a chronological album that digs deep into the concept of mental health and the “highs and lows” that cause chemical imbalances in the brain.

After releasing a few singles and steadily working on my album behind the scenes, I was approached by Bruce “Automatic” Vanderveer about joining his InRage Entertainment Team as a recording artist. After flying out to LA to meet with Automatic, I really enjoyed his positive and openminded outlook on life and on the music industry. So I made the decision to sign a record deal with InRage Entertainment.

Automatic and I will start working on an EP in February to be released sometime in late 2019. I am beyond excited to work with Automatic and the rest of the InRage team on this project.

Great, so let’s dig a little deeper into the story – has it been an easy path overall and if not, what were the challenges you’ve had to overcome?
2018 was a year of constant struggle. It marked the 2nd year of my company’s creation, and I was struggling to get out of the debt that I created around the company. Since I stopped producing other artists, the revenue for the company had dropped tremendously. I decided to get a loan out and renovate houses on the side to help fund the music.

The first house that I renovated was a disaster. I put a large amount of trust in my general contractor, and because of my lack of knowledge and his inconsistencies, the housing project ended up becoming over ten months behind schedule. I was loaned out for close to half a million dollars with no way to pay off the interest until the house was sold.

During that same time period, I was also dealing with many personal problems. From January 2018 to May 2018, I had four friends lose their lives; three to drug overdoses and one to suicide. Funerals seemed like a weekly occurrence. One of my closest aunts contracted ovarian cancer, and my father’s health was starting to deteriorate.

I found it difficult to talk to my parents about my depression because I knew they were fighting their own problems between my aunt and my father’s health conditions. So as any young man would do, I bottled my emotions because I did not feel like I had a healthy outlet for them. Because of my depression and my distant demeanor, my girlfriend of two years broke up with me over the phone.

Normally this wouldn’t have such a negative impact on me, but because of the depressive state I was in, I felt like the last connection I had to the world had walked out on my life, I do not blame her though, I would have left me too. Finally, later in the year, I decided to go to therapy and try to rationalize my problems and get them into check. It was the first time I had to verbalize each specific thing that I was feeling and thinking.

The process of therapy helped change my entire outlook on my life and my career. I realized that the drugs I was taking, the alcohol I was drinking, and the sleep I was loosing were all symptoms of a bigger problem; I felt like I had no control over my own life. That revelation turned my life around. I finally had a message, there was finally a purpose to my art.

I now wanted my art to reflect a positive outlook on mental health and people that feel as if they have no control. As an artist, my goal is to advocate for strong positive relationships and the idea of truly loving yourself because If I learned one thing from my struggles this past year, it’s that; to truly love someone or something, first, you have to love yourself.

InRage Entertainment – what should we know? What do you guys do best? What sets you apart from the competition?
I am a professional recording artist/music producer. I have two functions as a business.

From the recording artist side; I write, record and produce RnB and Hip Hop music for my personal fans as well as commercial songs for different corporations. I am very skilled and diverse when it comes to the types of music I can create.

Whether a company like Nike needs an upbeat song for a new commercial or my fans want a new collection of music based around my own story, I love to add a sense of unique vibrations to each song I create so that when people hear each song, they are drawn in to the different take on popular music.

From the music producer side, I help different artists find the sound they are looking for and help them bring that sound to life by mixing and mastering their vocals/instruments in a unique yet mesmerizing way that makes the listener want to hear more.

I am most proud of the message behind the company that is to deliver the best quality music possible while maintaining artist integrity and maintaining a positive outlook on life and business. I am proud of the relationships I have created. I am blessed to be able to network and collaborate with some amazing artists and producers.

I want to create a fundamental change in music. I want collaboration to be an industry standard. Especially in Hip Hop, there are many artists that refuse to collaborate with one another for various reasons. I want to break that barrier and bring all artists together to make the best music possible.

What moment in your career do you look back most fondly on?
My proudest moment was releasing my first solo album “Nothing Personal.” That album is very special to me because it marks the first collection of music I have created that serves a higher purpose than my own. Advocating for a positive change in mental health is what drives my creative side and my music.

Contact Info:

• Website: http://www.inrage.com/news/gas-him-up-but-not-really-tho
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/johnnygasofficial/

Image Credit:
Viewsfromsoulo

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